Issue #160: The Push for Tallahassee to Use Single-Member Districts
Data behind the debate
Right now, Tallahassee, the capital city of Florida, is in the middle of a charter review process. Officials have appointed several committee members to make recommendations on city governance, elections, and salaries. The original list of issues has been slowly narrowed down, but one issue keeps popping up and will be one of the subject of this Thursday’s meeting: creating single-member districts for city elections.
Currently, Tallahassee elects all five of its commissioners in at-large elections. The issue of districts has come up at different times in the city's history, but ultimately the system has remained the same. So why is it coming up now? Well that is why I wanted to write this piece. I want to discuss WHEN a city should use districts, WHY Tallahassee doesn't, and why the people pushing districts have their own selfish motives.
Current City Demographics
Before delving into the political debate within Tallahassee, it’s probably good for my readers to have a sense of the city's demographics. Part of the debate around single-member districts has revolved around race and ensuring demographic groups get to have a voice in government.
Tallahassee has a good degree of racial diversity within its borders. Being home to two major universities, Florida State and Florida A&M, as well as being the home to the capital, has made the city people from all walks of life flocking into its borders for school or work. It is currently 52% white, 33% black, and has a growing Asian and Hispanic population of students and young professionals.
The city’s black population is heavily concentrated in the southside of the city as well as in Frenchtown, which lies north of the FSU campus. However, neighborhoods in the Northwest are very diverse, and the eastern suburbs are seeing growing black and Asian middle-class homebuyers.
The presence of the universities also means a large population of younger voters reside in the district. A full 43% of the city voters are under 35. A full 17% are under the age of 25. This population includes students, but also young professionals and university employees. These younger voters are heavily clustered around the campuses.
The share of precincts with higher youth concentration is only growing as more students flock into the city, some even coming to go to Tallahassee Community College and then eventually transfer into the university system. More complexes are being built all the time. The reach and presence of students is only growing in the west half of the city.
The presence of students and state agencies means that despite the city being majority white, is overwhelmingly Democratic. Many the white residents are registered democrats, with Republicans being largely clustered in the Northern suburbs and as well as Buck Lake (east end) and Southwood (southeast end). Even these communities, however, have become more democratic leaning with time.
A vast majority of the city is firmly democratic in registration and voting. In 2020, Tallahassee gave Biden 70% of the vote. The northern precincts, covering communities like Killearn Estates, Ox Bottom, and Summerbrook, are the main sources of true Republican support. There is also a collection of rich Republican-leaning students in the FSU area. I wrote about this in 2017, it is due to clustering of high-end apartment complexes that funneled in wealthy kids who carried their parent’s politics. Give that a read for some in-the-weeds analysis of apartment complexes.
So how does Tallahassee’s politics and demographic makeup matter when it comes to it holding at-large vs single-member districts?
Why Isn’t Tallahassee Using Districts Now?
So here is the first important issue to address - when a city should use single-member districts. Across Florida, many cities use districts for elections, use at-large systems, or use a combination of both. Below are the Top 12 cities in Florida in terms of population. I’ve laid out the method of government for each city.
Tallahassee fits in with other cities around its population size in using at-large voting. Tallahassee is smaller in population than 3 other cities with at-large elections, and even Port St. Lucie is larger in land mass.
Some cities clearly should have districts, like Jacksonville, which is so large an entire congressional district could be fit inside. Other cities, like Pembroke Pines, moved to districts as it became worried about at-large elections being dominated by the power of retirees in condo communities. This actually ties in with an article I wrote last year that looks at how one major condo community can dominate a small/medium city’s politics.
Many of the cities with districts stem from litigation over racial representation. Cities with histories of at-large elections preventing minority candidates from winning office were often mandated to move to district races. Places like Miami and Ft Lauderdale were either being sued or about to be sued for the lack of opportunity the at-large system gave to its black voter populations.
So what happened with Tallahassee. Why did a court order never mandate the implementation of districts? Well, this is due to the cities own history of electing black candidates, something many other towns had not. In 1971, Tallahassee elected James Ford to the Tallahassee Commission, the first black man to win such a post since Reconstruction. I actually just covered Ford's historic election and the racial politics of Tallahassee at the time. It was actually Part 3 of a series I did covering black candidate for office from the 1950s to 1971. You can see each issues below.
Part 1: Black Candidates in Jim Crow Tallahassee
Part 2: Tallahassee in the Civil Rights Era
Part 3: The Election of James Ford in 1971
Ford's election came as other black candidates and leaders were speculating on district elections. His victory stopped the momentum of that movement for much of the 1970s. Several other black candidates would run, but fail to win. Ford would win over 70% of the vote in his 1977 re-election. By the early 1980s, the city has one black commissioner, but Leon County has zero black commissioners. The focus for the NAACP and black leaders was honed in on county commission elections being moved to districts, rather than a focus on the city.
However, the debate about city districts did pick up in the early 1980s as the county commission debate continued. In 1984, the Leon Democratic Party under Chairman Jon Ausman began to advocate for city district elections. Focus on districts did tie in with racial representation to some degree, but much of the focus was also on cost of running and the city's population growth warranting a change.
By 1984, Tallahassee had elected Jack McClean, a black attorney, to the city commission. Then two years later, Dorothy Inman would win a city council seat, making her the first black female elected to the commission. I actually plan to do more issues of my Tallahassee history series to cover this election period. With Inman's win, the city now had two black commissioners out of five. This was a larger percent that the black population of the city, and seemed to really kill off any district discussions. While the county would be forced to bring on districts in 1986, with the school board following in 1990, both over racial representation concerns, the city never found itself subjected to court scrutiny and the issue receded from attention.
Current City Politics
If you have been reading my newsletter for some time, you might remember me covering the contentions city elections from 2022. Tallahassee, more than any time in my memory, is bitterly divided in both its population and elected officials. I won't re-hash everything here, but these pieces delve into some of it
The short version is, the city government is currently divided 3-2 between a more developer friendly majority and 2 progressives. Mayor John Dailey, Commissioners Curtis Richardson and Dianne Williams Cox are the majority, while Jacqueline Porter and Jeremy Matlow are the progressives.
The last round of city elections saw Dailey and Cox win re-election against progressive challengers, while Matlow won re-election against a more developer-friendly challenger. The races each generated their own coalition of voters.
In the Mayor contest, Dailey won on a coalition of black and suburban voters, essentially campaigning on business investment lifting all boats. He lost with the white progressive community and students from all the colleges (regardless of race). Both Dailey and Dozier are white.
In the race for Council Seat 5, Dianne Williams-Cox, who is black, faced two black progressive challengers, Adner Marcelin and Shelby Green. Cox benefitted from the split vote, but had she fallen under 50%, a runoff would have been held.
The combined anti-Cox vote showed a very similar coalition; with Cox winning black and suburban voters and the progressives winning white progressive democrats and students.
Finally, incumbent Jeremy Matlow, who is white, faced David Bellamy, who’s ties to Republicans got used heavily against him. In this contest, black voters combined with students and white democratic progressives to back Matlow.
The only Bellamy areas were the more conservative and GOP-leaning suburbs. However, only a few new neighborhoods were heavily against Matlow.
Back in 2020, the other two commissioners were on the ballot. In 2020, Porter won her current seat by defeating Elaine Bryant, who’d been appointed to the seat a year earlier. Bryant, who is African-American, was part of the pro-developer side of the commission. Porter was her progressive challenger. Here, Bryant was able to dominate in the black community, but Porter pulled in massive margins with white progressives and students. In addition, the Northern suburbs, at the time angry with city hall, opted to back Porter as a check on the city administration, even if she was more liberal than they’d have liked.
This coalition is different than we saw in 2022, where Dianne Williams-Cox, part of the same developer-backing coalition that Bryant was part of, did take the Northside. It shows that the different precincts and the communities they represent can ebb and flow based on the election.
That same year, Curtis Richardson, a black commissioner also part of the developer side, won his election. He was forced into a runoff after other progressives split votes away from him. However, in a runoff with hyper right-wing Bill Schack, Richardson easily won the election in a landslide, losing only a handful of precincts.
All five of these races show a city that splits its tickets and has communities that are more than willing to make strategic or principle voting decisions. Right now the city is divided on the commission, but its notable how different the voter coalitions that elevated some members over others is.
This voting behavior would absolutely not point to any of the racially polarized voting that might warrant creating districts. So why is this the big focus right now?
The Republican Plot
The push for commission districts must be looked at in the context of the city’s current politics. It must also be highlighted the biggest advocates for districts come from the pro-developer side of the current divide in city government. The push by certain charter review board members comes as right-wing figures within the city are pushing the issue.
Recently, Steve Stewart, a conservative radio host in Tallahassee, made the news when he spoke in favor of districts to the Killearn Homeowners Association. After his presentation, the HOA voted to endorse single-member districts. Killearn, if you go back to the election maps, is the big precinct in the NE end of the city: 4125. It is a massive block of votes, and it is heavily populated by wealthier residents. Stewart has latched into a right-wing sentiment among some, but hardly all, residents in the area who feel their politics is overridden by downtown Tallahassee. However, that really doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. In fact, Killearn has voted for 4 of the 5 current city commissioners. Only Jeremy Matlow lost the community and still won the city. Killearn is currently an important voting block in city elections, and no candidate dares risk alienating it.
Right now, folks like Stewart want districts so they can try and draw a GOP-leaning district in the North, something open Republicans have a shot at instead of moderate Democrats. For Stewart, this is personal, as he has run and lost bids for City Council on 3 separate occasions. I covered his saga here: The Spectacular Self-Destruction of Steve Stewart. This GOP desire has been publicly backed by Leon County Republican Chairman Evan Power, who now serves as the Florida Republican Party Chairman.
Districts would Hurt Minority Voters
In the last Charter Review meeting, members supporting districts, again these being conservatives, tried to claim districts might be needed to protect minority voters. Jared Willis, a longtime Republican operative, displayed a map showing turnout by precinct from 2022, which indeed showed turnout lower in the black community that year. Willis’ argument is that if turnout disparities don’t improve, then black voters could get shut out citywide.
So lets debunk that. First off, context is important. I broke down the registration and vote cast within the city by race for all elections from 2018 to present. Remember Tallahassee holds elections during the August primaries, and with runoff’s in November of needed.
The 2022 general was indeed a nightmare when it came to turnout. Despite being 33% of the city voter registration, black voters only made up 25% of the vote cast in November. That is bad. I have written about turnout in 2022 nonstop, but here is my final article on that topic. Non-white turnout was bad across the state, with Tallahassee being no different. Even with that legit issue, black candidates in the area did well. One thing that aids this is the willingness of white voters to back black candidates.
Willis and other committee members, namely developer-backing Bugra Demirel, also claim that future demographic changes might lead to black voters losing influence. They talked about annexation of other lands or growth that might shrink the black population. Well for one, you don’t change election methods based on hypothetical growth or possible city boundary changes. In addition, the city AND county voters have shown they do not just look at race for candidates. Black candidates win citywide AND countywide. The county’s two at-large commissioners are black, as are the Tax Collector, Clerk of Court, Property Appraiser, and Sheriff. In fact, when Leon was ordered to go to districts in 1986, it came when no black countywide officials could win. That is not the case today for the city OR county.
Right now, Tallahassee elections have been good for minority voters and candidates, with black voters backing 4 of 5 current commissioners. Coalitions of minority voters, students, suburbanites, progressives, and many others form different alliances for different candidate. NO demographic group can be ignored. Districts would risk locking black voters into 2 or so districts. Right now they are a critical block in all five races.
Conclusion
I am all for cities, counties, or any jurisdiction looking at its voting methods and seeing if things should be changed. Tallahassee, however, clearly has a system that allows differing coalitions and gives power to many different groups of voters. There is no reason to make a change at this point.